[Gramps-users] Re: [Gramps-devel] further on dates

[Alex R. <sh...@al...>]

On 09/13/2004 05:36:57 PM, Jim Smart wrote:
[snip]
> "To show date imprecision, MAY 1890 is better than ABT 12 MAY 1890
> because ABT or EST do not have assigned limits."
> ...which might clarify things somewhat: EST is estimated, imprecise and
> has no assigned limits.

So, this seems like EST is the same as ABT. Why another tag then?
I'm going slightly mad, I guess :-)

> How about we allow imprecise dates to have "+/- n" as an optional
> suffix? e.g.:
>=20
> - EST 13 MAR 1942 +/- 10d
> - ABT JUN 1850 +/- 3m
> - ABT 1795 +/- 1y
>=20
> Internally, Gramps could treat these as date ranges if/when necessary.

Allowing +/- would indeed be a sweet option.

> Of course, if we were to support this additional date format, the +/-
> suffix could not be exported to GEDCOM files (at least, not in the date
> itself -- maybe we could add a note?)

It seems that the note is the only fallback we can count on.

> Alex, following on from our previous dialogue, would we then support
> things like:
>=20
> BET EST JUN 1853 +/- 2m AND CAL 30 AUG 1853
>=20
> ..or is this just taking things too far??? ;O)

I don't know the answer, but I think I can precisely formulate
the question now:

When using ranges and spans (from X to Y or between X and Y),
do X and Y have to be simple dates (i.e. exact single dates without
modifiers, even though incomplete)  or can they be any Date objects?

If the former, then the above string is a valid date. But then nothing
prohibits us from accepting BET (BET X and Y) and Z and so on,
for the indefinite depth. Where do we draw the limit? What about
BET (BET (BET X AND Y) AND (BET A AND (BET B AND C)) and Z) ?
This makes we want to cry :-)

Alex

--=20
Alexander Roitman   http://ebner.neuroscience.umn.edu/people/alex.html
Dept. of Neuroscience, Lions Research Building
2001 6th Street SE, Minneapolis, MN  55455
Tel (612) 625-7566   FAX (612) 626-9201